


the spaces between my fingers

by MercuryPheonix



Category: EastEnders (TV)
Genre: Angst, Coda, Deaf Character, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Like so much angst, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, also i reject the canon of his magical cochlear implant, ben is a sad boy who just wants callum, follows on from the ending of 17/9/20, he's an angsty mess and i love him, so no his hearing isn't back because that isn't how this works, this is my first fic in like seven years so be nice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:55:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26568382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryPheonix/pseuds/MercuryPheonix
Summary: "It was eerily similar, yet different. Very different. Like someone had run the concept of a cell door shutting through a machine. The difference was almost more frightening than the similarity. Like a reminder that this wasn’t just more of the same, but more of the same with added terror. Phil Mitchell’s deaf, gay son. Only now, with added deafness."After his arrest, Ben spends a night in a cell. Amongst the fear, and the memories, all he wants is Callum.
Relationships: Callum "Halfway" Highway/Ben Mitchell
Comments: 6
Kudos: 54





	the spaces between my fingers

**Author's Note:**

> This follows directly on from the ending of 17/9/20, with Ben held overnight after being arrested for his part in the warehouse job. Canon compliant, apart from the fact that I tried to make his experience with a newly switched on cochlear implant more realistic than the show has bothered to do (because no, his hearing isn't 'back'). 
> 
> The title is my favourite lyrics from 'Vanilla Twilight' by Owl City. For no other reason than I spent many nights at university listening to them in bed and crying.

_“the silence isn’t so bad_   
_til i look at my hands and feel sad_   
_coz the spaces between my fingers_   
_are right where yours fit perfectly”_

_Clang._

It was eerily similar, yet different. Very different. Like someone had run the concept of a cell door shutting through a machine. The difference was almost more frightening than the similarity. Like a reminder that this wasn’t just more of the same, but more of the same with added terror.

_Phil Mitchell’s deaf, gay son. Only now, with added deafness._

Ben lowered himself gently onto the uncomfortable shape they had the audacity to call a ‘bed’, staring at the floor to avoid taking in his surroundings. He didn’t need to see it. He knew the drill. He’d been in enough cells to know that they were pretty much all the same.

He had nightmares about this. They woke him up in cold sweat, his nails almost ripping as he clung to the sheets, as if they were the only thing keeping him from being dragged back in and the door bolted behind him. Dreams of locked doors, of uncaring guards, of fists and feet against his body, of trying so hard not to cry himself to sleep but failing. Dreams of knowing that he was so completely and utterly alone and no one was coming to save him. 

They’d been worse since he’d lost the hearing in his right ear. At least before then he’d been able to ground himself with the sound of cars outside, the familiar creaking of his house (or the almost-as-familiar-now sounds of Callum’s flat), the soft-yet-firm tone of Callum’s voice as he told him _it’s okay, you’re fine, you’re safe, I’m here_ …

More noises cut through, familiar yet unfamiliar, like someone was playing a soundscape in 8-bit; a not -quite-there MIDI file version of reality. He instinctively put his hands over his ears, willing the ringing to stop before remembering that wasn’t where the sound was coming through anymore. His hand moved up gently, tentatively, to the processor nestled just behind his ear, his lockdown hair falling over it, and wondered whether he should remove it.

That had been the thing about prison. The noise. The constant, unending noise. Doors shutting. Boots walking. People shouting. It kept him awake. Even when the other boys used to steal his hearing aid, he couldn’t shut out the noises of the prison. They were too much; always there, dripping reminders into his head that this is where he was, this is what he deserved, that he was trapped and there was no escape.

But he didn’t know if the silence would be better. He remembered the feeling of helplessness when they would wrench the hearing aid from his ear and rain punches to the side of his head, knowing they were laughing but unable to hear over the muffled ringing through his skull. The thought of taking the processor off, of letting himself be enveloped by that silence, terrified him almost as much as the memories stirred by the sounds around him.

He could feel his breath coming faster, catching at some point in his chest, painful. His eyes hurt. He didn’t even notice that he’d begun to chew on his finger, not until it started to hurt, not until he could feel the blood rushing to the little tooth marks, blossoming out below his skin to form bruises that would last him a good few days at least.

He was only a week into his switch on. He could hear things, sounds, and he could make some of them out, but it wasn’t sound as he remembered sound being. He was still piecing it all together, trying to get his brain to convert these sparks of electricity into something resembling the things he remembered. He had at least seven more tune up appointments booked in. He had sessions planned to help him work on translating the unnatural sounds ringing through from the implant in his skull. He was so far away from being anywhere near anything.

How would that happen now? Prisons weren’t renowned for their world class audiology departments. Would he be stuck like this, hearing but also not hearing, like codes in front of him that he didn’t have the key to unlock? 

He still needed to focus on people’s lips as they spoke, he still needed those little signs that Callum now automatically dropped into conversation. Something caught in his throat. People in prison weren’t like Callum. They weren’t good. They wouldn’t work with him. They wouldn’t take the time to come up with a new way of communicating with him. They wouldn’t care about making sure he was okay, checking he could understand. It wouldn’t cross their minds to be so bloody _lovely_ to him.

He bit down again, without thinking – hard this time, hard enough to shock him into pulling his finger out of his mouth. His eyes were hurting more now. Dammit.

It didn’t help that his brain was doing that thing that he always did when he panicked: _just wanting Callum._

At that, Ben lay down, almost throwing himself to the side and curling his knees in, facing the wall so he didn’t accidentally stare at the gaping chasm of drudgery on the inside of the cell. He doesn’t bother taking off his shoes, keeping them on like an extra layer of armour, even though it would have taken nothing more than a kick to get them off – they’d taken his shoe laces, because of course they had, as if he had the guts to do anything with them.

Even during his sentence for manslaughter, when it all got too much, the bruises stung too sharp, when a black hole gaped open in his head, and he’d considered the possibility of not waking up, he’d been too scared that it was going to hurt. He didn’t have the guts. He was weak. And everyone knew it the second they saw him.

They – him and Callum, but mainly Callum – had figured out a new way of dealing with them – the nightmares – in the months after the boat crash. Gentle words were replaced by gentle touches – soft, to ease him out of it whilst not startling him, patterns drawn on his arm, or on his back, fingers tucking his hair behind his ear. Pre-agreed tapping of fingers on skin, like morse code, the basic signs they’d been trying to learn traced onto his flesh.

The words only came when he could feel them, when he was back in reality enough to know where he was, curled in against Callum’s chest, gripping tightly onto his arms, the hum of everything Callum was saying vibrating through his skull as lips pressed against his hair.

That’s where he should have been now. Not here. Not in this place.

But of course he was here. Because he’d mucked everything up. Again.

That’s what he always did.

Ben’s knees came up further against his chest, pressing almost painfully against the wall as he hooked his hands behind them, tightened into a protective ball.

_God, he just wanted Callum._

His mind began to wander towards the future, as much as he tried to hold it back. Of the years he could be facing. Of the sinking feeling pooling in his stomach that he wasn’t going to come out of this stretch alive. Of how he was going to tell Callum that he should move on and leave him here, to rot, where he deserved. He’d probably have to push hard. Callum was a stubborn bastard when he wanted to be, and he loved Ben, for some goddamn reason that Ben couldn’t understand – the depths he was going to have to reach to shove Callum’s heart out of the prison with him and into the real world he deserved made his toes curl.

He reached up, suddenly, disconnecting the processor from his implant. The sudden shutting off of those weird, foreign sounds was like release washing over him, and, for a second, he could even pretend that his thoughts had gone quiet. His fingers curled instinctively into a fist, tightly. Keeping the processor safe so that none of the boys could steal it, just like he used to do with his hearing aid at night.

Muscle memory. You don’t forget it.

Closing his eyes, he wrapped his arms around himself, reaching under his top, squeezing gently, then tighter. He only let himself take up half of the crappy single bed, leaving space behind him for someone tall– pushing himself into the wall as if crushed there by a figure pressing against his back, warm and overbearing and making him feel small, cocooned and safe. His free fingers drew patterns on his skin, dancing out that little Morse code they’d come up with, letting himself detach from his own body, drain away into that numbness, that place where he couldn’t figure out where he started and Callum began.

And, just for the few, precious moments as he dipped between waking and sleeping, he could truly believe that those fingers were someone else’s - someone with hands that dwarfed his own and held him in place, all night, strong and sturdy against the raging sea that tried to sweep him away. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for taking the time to read this. I haven't written fanfiction for a really long time, and it's taken these ridiculous silly angsty boys to get me doing it again. 
> 
> And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to adopt Ben Mitchell and gift him all of the hugs.


End file.
